Volume 15, Number 3
August 2019
DISCUSSION

Against Jeffrey Howard on Entrapment

Volume 15, Number 3, August 2019, Pages 283–290
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v15i3.777
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Abstract

Jeffrey Howard has recently argued that entrapment and similar phenomena are wrongful - and wrong the induced agent - because they violate a regulative obligation of respect for the first moral power (fmp, for short.) According to Howard, this obligation grounds a duty not to foreseeably increase the likelihood that another agent acts wrongly (duty, for short.) While I accept the existence of the more fundamental obligation, I try to show that it doesn’t support duty. Therefore, it does not support the wrongfulness of entrapment and similar phenomena. I do this by offering a more nuanced account of fmp‘s value, and one more attuned to certain liberal thoughts about agency. I then suggest a fairly minimalist picture of what respect for fmp involves, but close in a constructive spirit by sketching an alternative argument for duty based on the telos of fmp.
Copyright © 2019 Jonathan Stanhope
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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